This study reports on an evaluation of the "Reading Partners" program, which uses community volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring to struggling readers in underresourced elementary schools. Established in 1999 in East Menlo Park, California, the mission of "Reading Partners" is to help children become lifelong readers by…

Recently, educational researchers and practitioners have turned to value-added models to evaluate teacher performance. Although value-added estimates depend on the assessment used to measure student achievement, the importance of outcome selection has received scant attention in the literature. Using data from a large, urban school district, I…

Class-size reduction (CSR) mandates presuppose that resources provided to reduce class size will have a larger impact on student outcomes than resources that districts can spend as they see fit. I estimate the impact of Florida's statewide CSR policy by comparing the deviations from prior achievement trends in districts that were required to…

In this article we examine student performance on mandated tests in grades 3, 4, and 5 in one state. We focus on this interval, which w e term "the fourth grade window," based on our hypothesis that students in grade four are particularly vulnerable to decrements in achievement. The national focus on the third grade as the critical…

Over the past decade many university-based teacher education programs and school districts have forged partnerships creating restructured, collaborative programs aimed at improving teaching and learning for credential candidates, as well as the children that they serve. According to data from the California Department of Education, progress is…